If you don’t have the opportunity to own a home yet and you choose to rent a home this may lead you to believe you can have a trampoline, after all, it’s your place. Well, this is definitely not as easy or straight forward as it may appear on the surface.
Can you have a trampoline at a rental property? This will depend heavily on your rental agreement with the people, or company, that you rent the property from. Even if not expressly covered on this rental form trampolines fall under Attractive Nuisanse Laws which vary by state.
Let’s look a little more into the reasons why renters worry about their properties having a dangerous toy available. It’s not always about being mean or abusive of their power, it is to protect themselves from lawsuits as trampoline injuries have a large financial hit for the country each year.
Why Are Rental Properties Not Friendly to Trampolines?
So at the core this comes down to the issues with insurance and being the responsible party should something go wrong with the trampoline bouncer. As a rental property owner, you have insurance on a house that allows and doesn’t allow specific items on the property, this is why it can’t be decided without the inclusion of the landlord to first make sure policy covers this.
Tenants should never place a trampoline on a rental property without first seeking permission from their landlord.
When tenants put up this kind of attractive nuisance they set themselves, and the landlord up for possible lawsuits. That is not the kind of interactions you would want to have with your landlord, don’t set yourself up and have this conversation ahead of purchasing and installing at a rental property.
What is an Attractive Nuisance in Law?
Basically from reading up on the subject, this rule means that injuries on the property due to the trespassers will basically fall on the landowner and not the renter. This ruling is due to the fact that the toys, I guess, lured kids to come in and get injured, I’m not very excited to have found this out just feels like an out for the renters.
It states that a landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by an object on the land that is likely to attract children.
Wikipedia
So when your landlord is being “unfair” and telling you that even though you have kids that you can’t have a trampoline, this isn’t because they just want to hurt your feelings, they are taking financial care for themselves.
What About Renters Insurance?
You may counter with, well I have renters insurance. Somehow this one phrase makes renters think everything is covered and that they are covered for any issues that should occur.
What most renters don’t ask about though is things like a trampoline and you know what, it is REALLY HARD to get rental insurance that will cover your installation of a trampoline. Specifically due to the number of problems and injuries related from kids to adults.
Final Thought
If you are looking to rent a house then I would suggest that you hold off on a trampoline until you can own your own place. Between the number of legal issues, tenant and landlord issues and just plain fights this will cause, don’t do it.
If you want to approach your landlord about it you need to be very understanding as to their issues as well as your own. Most trampoline accidents don’t happen on purpose, see what I did there, it’s not that you want them to occur but that they almost always will occur.
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